Mom Melinda Herman was with her 9-year-old twins last Friday when an intruder broke into their Loganville, Georgia, home. To protect herself and her family, Herman shot the intruder five times and is now being hailed a hero.

According to a story that the National Rifle Association (NRA) shared not too long after the incident, an intruder later identified as Paul Ali Slater had rung the doorbell several times before he decided to break into the home. Realizing that the situation had escalated, Herman quickly gathered her children to hide in a crawl space and retrieved her .38 caliber revolver.

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As Slater broke into the home and neared the hiding place of Herman and her children, Melinda Herman desperately called her husband Donnie, who was at work at the time.

From the recorded phone call retrieved by the Huffington Post, Donnie was heard instructing his wife what to do.

“He's in the bedroom? Shh, shh, relax. Just remember everything that I showed you, everything that I taught you, all right?"

Melinda had previously visited the shooting range with her husband.

Just as Slater had opened the door to the family’s crawl space, Melinda fired her gun and shot Slater five times in the face and neck. Somehow, Slater managed to flee from the home into an SUV before crashing down the road.

“My wife is a hero. She protected her kids. She did what she was supposed to do as responsible, prepared gun owner,” Donnie Herman later told a local news station.

Melinda Herman was a mother that did what was necessary to protect her family and the NRA shared the incident on their Twitter with the hashtag #ArmedCitizen. Now, Melinda’s story has evolved into a national conversation following a tragic series of gun violence.

The NRA emphasized the need for personal gun ownership given the outcome of Melinda's actions.

However, anti-gun proponents argued that Melinda Herman’s weapon was a handgun and not the high-capacity assault rifles that they are fighting against.

Following the Sandy Hook tragedy, President Obama stated the he supports legislation to reinstate the ban on assault weapons, as well as the total outlaw of high-capacity ammunition magazines.